Final Bigadic Blog

This has nothing to do with parenting! I am so bad at that, I can't seem to deal with the guilt involved in writing anything meaningful on a regular basis. Although, one small snippet - I made Knicker Bocker Glory's for the kids the other night and was trying to get them to say the name of the 'dessert'. Charlie managed it, finally, albeit with a strong Belfast accent. Ben and Livvy eventually arrived at their own versions of it, too. Woody, Mr Minimum Effort, settled with Knicker Licker Morey, a far better name than the original and the name I shall give it from here on in!

Recently, I came across the final, unpublished entry of our 'Search for Bigadic' journal. I've been meaning to post it for a while now so, tonight, as Nicky and I were talking about travel - the fact that we can't afford to do it, along with the small matter that, even if we could, we now have four kids which makes it all the more unlikely - I'm finally in the mood to type it up. Anyway, enough of all that...here it is, typed up as it was written. It was intended to cover our journey from Singapore to Ao Nang in Thailand, but it seems I never actually finished it.

It also seems like a long, long time ago...


KHARMA KHAZI

Arriving at Singapore airport, we were disappointed to discover that no one had gone to the trouble of learning English in anticipation of our arrival. So, I quickly took control of the situation and, in typical male fashion, led us around the airport aimlessly until Nicky snapped. ''What are you doing?'', she asked, then kindly answered the question herself: ''You're just wandering around aimlessly!''. It was a fair cop and, if I hadn't been rumbled, I'd probably still be staring at that payphone trying to figure out where the coins went. Thankfully, Nicky sussed it, phoned The Hawaii Hostel, reserved a room, then led us to the taxi rank. Women, eh!

Lonely Planet said this about The Hawaii Hostel: ''Small, tidy, air-con rooms...''. We, on the other hand, said this: ''Oh Jesus, look at the stairs!''. They were surely the steepest that it's possible to construct and went onwards and upwards for as far as the eye could see. Thankfully, reception was only two flights up and, although unable to speak ourselves, once there we were greeted by a very chirpy Chinaman.

A ROOM WITH NO ROOM

''You wan see woom?''. We only half-nodded, petrified that this might entail climbing more stairs which, of course, it did. One more flight on the Stairway to Hell and we were outside Room 26. As the Chinaman prised open the door, something appeared to be blocking its path - I believe it was the back wall. ''Vay clean, air-con!'' he beamed. We peered in and thought: ''Vay small, you con!''. Then it was off to see the toilets. We presumed the spring in his step reflected his confidence that the facilities at the end of the hall would clinch the deal. As it turned out, he just didn't want his feet to touch the carpet for any longer than was absolutely necessary. The toilets were a violently ugly sight.

It was 10pm, we were hot, tired, stressed and hungry. With our sorry heads hung in shame, we paid for the night.

WHAT A SHITTER

Before I go any further: Asian toilets...

...For a start, there's no toilet, just a neat little hole in the floor. The idea is that you hovver elegantly in a squatting position and, despite every ounce of your inner dignity screaming ''don't-don't'', you drop your 'doo-doo' into the dug out. To use golfing parlance, a 'hole-in-one' is the shot to play for. Clearly, some residents of The Hawaii Hostel thought it was a Par 4 (and some of them had scored a Bogey!). To be fair, it's not as easy it sounds. There's definitely a gap in the market for a 'simulator' which might allow Western travellers to get in some much-needed target practice before arriving in this part of the world. At the very least, I'd advise enrolment in a yoga class, in order to achieve the required flexibility in the lower limbs.

Another glaring omission of the Singapore shitter is toilet paper and, instead, beside each hole in the ground you'll find a handy little water hose. It's 'out' with the Andrex Puppy and 'in' with Red Adair, which is particularly appropriate given that your first bowl of Singapore noodles is likely to leave your sphincter burning like an Iraqi oil well. However, a word of warning (from the voice of experience): before reaching for that hose in a bid to douse those flames, check the trigger on that baby first - unless you fancy a free session of colonic irrigation. Some of the hoses are so powerful they require a firm, two-handed grip. Furthermore, to avoid the stunning effects of a water cannon on the forehead, precision alignment is a must. As with the Singapore Squat, it's a tricky business and practice is prudent.

WET BEHIND THE EARS!

So, let's assume your legs are as supple as a Soviet gymnast's, and the hours you've spent watching London's Burning are now bearing fruit. The final dilemma is this: by the end of it all, you're absolutely soaking wet. At the time of writing, we have absolutely no idea what you're supposed to do about this (squelch, squelch), but if we work it out you'll be the first to know - well, the third to know. (Hey, I know it's nasty, but you won't find this 'shit' in Lonely Planet!).

We only got to spend one full day in Singapore, a large portion of which was taken up trying to buy a ticket for the next day's train to Hat Yai in Southern Thailand. It was a complex process but we got there in the end, before boarding a bus back to Bencoolen Street and The Hawaii Hostel. An hour and a half later, we got off that bus and decided to get one that actually went to Bencoolen Street. Nicky was so proud of me that day!

OODLES OF NOODLES
Bencoolen Street has an abundance of eateries and, having worked up quite an appetite, we found a gem of a place not a minute's walk from the hostel. For about a pound, we had two drinks and two almighty plates of vegetable curry and rice. I decided to wash it all down with the obligatory cup of coffee, unaware that the local brew comes already sweetened. Dredging a canal would require less effort than stirring this concoction. Actually, drinking from a canal would be a far preferable experience. It was diabetes in a cup and should probably be drank with an insulin chaser.

JUST HOP ON THE BUS, GUS

Early next morning, Nicky woke me from my diabetic coma and, by 7.30, we were watching CNN on the bus, en-route to the railway station. Our final destination was to be Ao Nang, near Krabi, Thailand, and the journey to get there was fairly monumental. From Singapore, a six hour train ride would take us to Kuala Lumpur. We then had a six-hour wait before boarding the overnight sleeper train to Hat Yai, a short 16-hour jaunt, from where we would then get a coach to Krabi, four hours further north. And, after that, we had to find our own way to Ao Nang!

The train from Singapore left at 8.10am precisely and pulled into Kuala Lumpur's Sentral Station an uneventful, though equally precise, six hours later. With time on our hands we decided to take the Sky Train into the city and got off to discover - to my horror and Nicky's delight - that we'd been spat out onto the ground floor of a huge, six-storey shopping complex. We spent the next four hours watching very wealthy people buying very expensive goods. The only purchase we made, other than a bit of lunch, was nuts! Nicky had a pregnant craving for some walnuts and, sure enough, there was a small stall on the ground floor selling every nut known to man. Along with the walnuts, the woman also insisted we sample one of her new (and hopefully discontinued) lines - roasted almonds wrapped in figs. Believe it or not (and I don't) they were actually quite nice, so we bought a box to snack on during our onward journey.

HOW HIGH IS A CHINAMAN

Eventually, the time came to board the overnight sleeper train to Hat Yai. Finding carriage S1 was easy - getting into it wasn't. Our backpacks were marginally bigger than the people this train had been designed to carry, and getting them - and ourselves - onboard was no mean feat. Our top bunks were the first two in the carriage, just past the toilets and the automatic door and we were pleased with the handy location. Pleased, that is, until we pulled back the curtains behind which lay our bunks. We immediately sensed a small discrepancy. As we stood in the aisle with our brains screaming to our eyes: ''Are you sure?'', a guard nudged past us whistling: 'Hey ho, Hey ho, it's off to work we go...''.

There was not a lot of room.

Before I had even managed to squeeze my backpack into the space, Nicky had her bed sorted and was lying on her bunk looking like a semi-comfortable giant on a very small bed. I finally wedged my bags in, put one foot on the little steel step and hoisted myself up. One nanosecond later, I was back where I'd started, my head having crashed thunderously into the roof of the carriage, sending me, stunned, back into the aisle. I tried again, and precisely the same chain of events occurred. What was I supposed to do...levitate? It seemed a physical impossibility. Finally, I decided not to use the step and simply hauled myself up in the most unceremonious manner and slid myself onto the bed sideways.

Once I was up there, I lifted my head to see if there was any spare room for my legs and promptly reacquainted my skull with the ceiling. Becoming mildly frustrated, I decided to get down again and try to rearrange my bags from the aisle. Working blind, I managed to locate the little step with my outstretched foot and tried to turn my body so that my dismount would be slightly more elegant than my mount. There wasn't enough room to turn and, after headbutting the ceiling several more times, I just slid myself sideways and let my legs drop uncontrollably to the floor. In the process, my swinging left boot breezed millimetres past the face of an extremely old, extremely startled (and extremely small) Chinaman in the bunk below. When I finally came to rest in the aisle, I looked around the carriage half-expecting my fellow passengers to be holding up scorecards for my gymnastic dismount, but most of them were now happily ensconced in their miniscule bunks.

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And that's where the journal ended...sad really, as the overnight sleeper was definitely worth a more detailed description and the 4-hour coach journey to Krabi was truly hell on earth (Nicky spent most of the journey barfing undigested roasted almonds wrapped in figs into sick bags while, on the TV, an unhinged Thai comedian screamed at the top of his voice for the full four hours). Also, on stepping off the coach in Krabi - very queasy, very tired, very hot and very 'not in the mood for some local conman to insist we get in his taxi' - Nicky had a 'quiet word' with a local taxi driver! However, we found our way to Ao Nang in the end and it was definitely worth the journey. Perhaps, if I can muster the enthusiasm, I'll try to write the very, very last Bigadic journal mentioning, in more detail, the wonders of Ao Nang, the beautiful Wanderer's Inn in the Perhentian Islands, Malaysia and, of course, our very last port of call, New Dehli, where they wouldn't let us out of the world's coldest airport.

That's all folks...